zlacker

The Amiga 500 had high res graphics (or high color graphics … but not on the same scanline), multitasking, 15 bit sound (with a lot of work - the hardware had 4 channels of 8 bit DACs but a 6-bit volume, so …)

In 1985, and with 512K of RAM. It was very usable for work.

>>beagle+(OP)
a 320x200 6bit color depth wasn't exactly a pleasure to use. I think the games could double the res in certain mode (was it called 13h?)

>>mrits+N
For OCS/ECS hardware 2bit HiRes - 640x256 or 640x200 depending on region - was default resolution for OS, and you could add interlacing or up color depth to 3 and 4 bit at cost of response lag; starting with OS2.0 the resolution setting was basically limited by chip memory and what your output device could actually display. I got my 1200 to display crisp 1440x550 on my LCD by just sliding screen parameters to max on default display driver.

Games used either 320h or 640h resolutions, 4 bit or fake 5 bit known as HalfBrite, because it was basically 4 bit with the other 16 colors being same but half brightness. The fabled 12-bit HAM mode was also used, even in some games, even for interactive content, but it wasn't too often.

>>mrits+N
You might be thinking of DOS mode 13h, which was VGA 320x200, 8 bits per pixel.

>>teamon+Ba
And 6-bits per colour component.

>>teamon+Ba
i remember playing with mode 13h, writing little graphics programs with my turboc compiler. computers were so magical back then.